My PS3 discussion from gaming forum

Here is some recycled quotes I typed up because I don't feel like typing up all that covered information. Hope you like....

Sorry, but i went thru this and looked at every 10 threads, got lazy and tried to find the end....its looooonnnnnngggg! And you guys changed the appearance since last time...and it looks a lot better!

If I don't want to load ****...I turn all the images off in Firefox preferences so the loading times do not bother me...it's lightning fast on my PC!


I don't want to sound like a rabid 360 fanboy but I'm really getting PSX-N64 feelings from this. Really, if MS makes pricecut (and they WILL make it)...Even if it's just 50$...350 premium vs. 600 PS3.

Well, A:

You could buy both of them and be two fanboys. PS2 got into the Ginneius Book of World Records so it's a good time to be a Sony fanboy. Problem with the Ginneius Book of World Records is Super Mario Bros Deluxe for Gameboy is the best selling game so stating you know.....Nintendo is. Not to mention that Dual Screen is beating PSP even if PSP is better (cos it emulates everything 32-bit and below). You can run your NES, SNES. GBA Roms on PSP so that makes PSP unofficially backwards compatible with 30 platforms. And not only can you emulate games, You can run Frozen Bubble and Super Tux on it (two open source community favorites)

When you have as many roms as I do, PSP is the portable handheld of choice!

I don't want to talk about it because PSP pwns Dual Screen (unless your playing New Super Mario Bros. or Brain Age or Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow) DoS is suppose to be the best handheld Castlevania ever made. New Super Mario Bros is of course brilliant and Brian Age is for noobies who don't game on.


Oblivion is a perfect example of a game that looks to see if there is a hard drive and caches the game


I agree because a.) Xbox 360 runs Windows and B.) PC runs Windows. What whatever game on PC uses the HDD.


and a built in Wi FI which in turn only benefits them and them only with PSP connectivity


I agree, I have a Gameboy Player with 15 GBA games and I never use the GBA link cable to play GBA games on TV. I use the controller because I can't afford AAA batteries. I'm sort of not that rich.



I miss the old thread, ssssssoooooooooo much has changed since I was last here.


I agree. Catharton Electronica had 10,000 threads and the forum crashed and currupted. I had 4,520 posts and now i am stuck with 350. Doesn't that make you feel ****ty inside!


It was my understanding that the 20GB PS3 doesn't have an HDMI output, but the 60GB PS3 doe


Sweet, if I have $600 someday I am buying a PS3! It's one of my dreams to be there on launch day and get a PS3......


eople, who don't own a HDMI input HDTV and have absolutely no intention of buying one in the near future


We're human. Some of us have normal IQs okay. Our species can barely go to the moon meaning if there is games that look pretty + involve space travel, futuristic landscapes were Human-kind is off Earth in my life time...**** I'll pay anything so i can pretend see it and broaden my human imagination. Yea, I'm talking about Halo, Xenosaga, Star Ocean 3, Prey, Half-life 2, Battlefield 2142, and all that good ****.


Correct me if I´m wrong, but the biggest official HDD for the 360 is 20GB. Right?


40 GB HDD when PS3 comes out. IGN confirmed it. The problem is PS3 has PS2 games (4 GB +) on it's hard drive and Xbox 360 just has game demos (a lot less space) And trust me, you are not going to listen to 1 GB of wma in one setting (if you're like me, you only listen to 64MB of mp3s in one setting off thumb drive)

Xbox 360 has WMA10 which is as good as year old [h]igh [e]fficently [a]dvanced [a]udio [c]oding (suppose to sound transparent at 64 kbps).

Anything FAT32 HDD can connect to 360's USB port and that can be a lot lot more so remember that.


If Sony had put all of its eggs in one basket, by only offering the $599 system, a lot of people, who have no intention of spending $600 on a game console and/or no intention of gaming or playing movies in 1080p, would leave the PS3 on the shelves. It may adversely affect the resolution of the games produced, but I don't expect that to be an issue as time goes on and more people own the HDMI enabled PS3 (or a possible converter for the Core system -- I don't know how you would convert a high bandwidth, 1080p digital signal to analog and then back to a high bandwidth, 1080p digital signal) and an HD display that can receive a 1080p signal. The first gen games on a console are not nearly as great, graphically, as subsequent gens of games, anyway.


I feel so sorry for Super Nintendo now. Back in old school times when we played games till they wore out or got so dirty they wouldn't work anymore. I haven't played my old school game collection in ages. You need to appreciate them for the year and not the technology. But of course, SNES was the fad when it came out because no 32-bit CPUs were cost efficient enough for everybody to enjoy Quake or enjoy polygon graphics. Now I am hearing that polygons are obsolete and Wii and PS3 use the successor to the polygon, NURBs, used in [C]omputer [A]ided [D]esign programs.

....Back to the high definition 21 century world of today. *sigh*


I used to the standard PS2 DVD player for over a year.


My PS2 DVD player makes a annoying very low bitrate interference sound once in a while so i used something else.


i think that the 360 will outsell the ps3


Well, I heard the "Two Good ones for one Bad one" way to often from one of my mates. I see people here already know the price of PS3 so yea.


Dreamcast is better then anything that came out after it.


Why? I have everything since 09/09/99, and I say it isn't true. It had a blasted 640x480 which is the resolution of your color tv you may used for Super Nintendo. Sure, Soul Calibur was a great game, but Halo and Metal Gear Solid 2 pwn Soul Calibur. Dreamcast didn't have the greatest sports game known to man! (the only good American football game on the market...hint hint.) Fine, so it had NFL 2k1 and NFL 2k2 from clever game studio Visual Concepts and I agree it looked better then Madden 99. Madden is still the best selling American sports game ever!


Do you think the ps3 will heat easily like the 360?


Heck yeah! I seen the Xenon CPU at Wikipedia or Google Images. The Cell Broadband Engine is approx the same size and unless it's totally exterressial in origin it'll heat up just as much.....


I just have to say, I own a PS, and a PS2 and have no intention of buying a PS3.


I have 42 PS, and 110 PS2 games and I still hope i afford one in 1 year so i can be cool. I was being a bit too cool with PS2 i believe. I doubt my wallet or bank account will survive a PS3 investment (unless I sell my truck and buy a Honda or Victory motorcycle That never will happen because you know how many insane drivers are on the freeway now-a-days. Assholes are all going 85 mph! I value my life thank you very much!)


Microsoft and Sony are jumping the gun on the technology because most people don't want to replace all of there DVD's considering we all just replaced all of our VHS with DVD's LOL


That's not why DVDs became popular. 700 MB CDs became way too limited. Heck, even 700 MB "3M Black Watch" 940e tape drives are obsolete forcing the government and hardware manufactures to go DVD anyways. It's by far the cheapest way to store 8.5 GB. US Government knew this so the DVD specs were created. Possible ways of Government usage would be the National Film Vault, Washington DC National Library (were it has a encylopedia as large as Wikipedia.com in terms of terabytes of used storage)

MPEG2 was invented for use of satellite TV since 1994 when DirecTV was a new company with their main product, mini-dish technology. Before, analogue dishes had to be big enough to pick up satellite signals and turn to recieve different satellites' signals whereas the mini-dish picks up 1 satellite for all the digital channels.

Fox News Channel seems to achieve video on DVD. Without DVD, News channels like Fox couldn't achieve old newscasts or war footage because of the high-resolution quality of all it's footage without using Betamax.


Have a look around megagames now and then because they have huge write ups on consoles that they pull from magazines and conferences all the time and they update alot..


I've been there. They have a big selection of freeware like Home of the Underdogs. Also I like their trainer selection. It saved my ass a bunch of times.


Best: Nintendo wii
Second best: Play Station 3
Third best: Dreamcast
Fourth best: Xbox 360
Fifth best: Play Station 2
Sixth best :Xbox


I believe the only reason why Dreamcast is on the list is Sega just had to be on the list and it'd be silly to have the last good Sega console, Genesis/Mega Drive, because those consoles all compute polygons, not sprites or Winamp's Visualization graphics....what are those anyways?


Sony comes out and says, "Yeah, Microsoft is probably going to come out on top


PS3 is suppose to be Sony's primary Blu-ray player (one of the cheapest). It is a tool they'll use to make Bluray popular. The last thing they want is it to go Betamax on them! Every Blu-ray players besides PS3 will cost $800+.


you wont ever see the statement Online GAMING is free


Except on PC, where online gaming originated.....think way back to Diablo by Blizzard North..or Quake I.
Closed battlenet must be the oldest public online gaming server in existence...at least i think so....(1996 - Present)


I also like how you think Nintendo games are kiddy, when Nintendo has released games like Resident Evil 4 and MGS The Twin Snakes


MGS The Twin Snakes is a hit or miss, but Resident Evil 4 has the best graphics, sound, gameplay, state-of-the-art cinematic, creepy as hell atmosphere, and used 99.99% of the Gekko, ATI Flipper, and 24 MB of 1T-SDRAM combined. I was speechless and asked myself....is this game for Gamecube? I thought i was seeing Xbox graphics there for a moment which is a complement for Nintendo...I usually don't agree with gamecube (i own one, but i choose not to like Nintendo which is why i am on this forum).


It is unlikely that more space than dvd9 will be needed.


Yeah, I heard developers think compression is evil somewhere before. They want to be sloppy with compression and Xbox 360 forces them to be efficient....means more work and game developers only get paid so much! Bink Video is popular because it's SDK is free.


Gears of war doesn't look that good
]

Yeah, I agree. It's not a DirectX 10 game or for the DirectX 10 G80 core powered Geforce 8800.


Too Human was a good example of that. It was a game that the Xbox community was raving over before E3, but then it fell off the radar completely once the playable demo was shown.


Too Human looks like a rehashed Halo, Star Trek Borg inspirent. They wanted it too look like a borg cube in ST: The Next Generation or First contact or modeled after Borg Cubes in Star Trek Voyager. That's where they got their ideas from.

Wait..they got their ideas from Star Trek Elite Force and Elite Force II because it involves the Borg and the Voyager crew. Yeah, that's it! It makes perfect sense because it looks a little like Elite Force II!


Snake isn't 60 in MGS4...it's a common misconception.


MGS2 takes place in 2007 and MGS4 takes place in 2020s. Snake looks 30 - 35 so in 2007 so he must be between 48 - 53 in 2025.


I would love to see that game in action and see what it is that PS3 can do that others canno


There is a rumor that Metal Gear Solid 4 will be also on PC like Metal Gear Solid 2 was. It's not confirmed yet. It's true the PC version could look superior to the Xbox version.


the PS3 has the ability to play HD movies and games the 360 does no


Xbox 360s coming out a year after PS3 will have a internal HD-DVD drive, and the 360 has that IDE DVD-ROM drive sized external HD-DVD drive. It's taller then Wii!


but everyone shouldn't have to try be all neutral in regards what console they like the most.


For me, I was loyal N64 fan, then loyal DC fan up to 2001, then loyal Gamecube fan up to 2003, Loyal PS2 fan till present, and slightly less loyal Xbox fan since 2003 (since i bought xbox and ps2 within 3 weeks of one another), but different Xbox 360 fan. No body can deny 360 is bad because it is cool to have one.


You have to realize that, PS3's and 360's architectures are very different


Oh yeah...both Power PC architecture-based, but very different.......both have at least 256 MB of GDDR3, hard drive, support same game engines, USB 2.0, cheap fans, IBM’s 0.13 micron CPU process, and run DVDs for their games. (PS3 DVD9 games are possible). The new Xenons in 360 will have a 0.11 micron process (state-of-the-art process).


If you're gonna to make a next gen, then go all the way.


What's Xbox 2.0 then? A DirectX 10 Xbox with 1024 MB GDDR3 ATI Firecross GPU? Damn silly if that was Xbox 2.0. I wish I had a Firecross inside my PC, but it's over $500. If it was in my PC I'd have PS3 1080p graphics.


Originally Posted by EbonySeraphim
A multiplatform game could be as good as an exclusive title to a single console, but most probably would not

be well suited to run on other consoles without severe drawbacks. It is true that no games use the full power

of consoles (in terms of all of those technical hardware specs), but the ones that come significantly closer

to the rest are approaching a higher number of those limits - considerably higher than a cross platform title

would likely be doing. I'll explain how I think (I don't know for sure) how ports are done.

Shortly after the concept of a game occurs, a target platform is also derived. It is usually a single

platform in mind, with other consoles considered for porting. The Single platform picked will be the baseline

machine the game will run on, and the engine will be designed to work fully to the game's prospective result.

If the target is slated for multiplatform release, it is likely the developers might see that another platform

is not able to perform well enough to handle something they are currently during. When that happens they can

take one of two approaches - lower the requirements of the feature allowing all platforms to support it, or

keep it and struggle to find a way to make it work on other consoles with the possibility that it may not work

at all for other consoles. When it comes time to write(port) for the other platforms, everything should go as

smoothly as development for the baseline platform except those features which were either known to possibly

not work on another platforms. There is also the possibility that something unforseen performs better or

worse than the baseline console. Assuming the ported platform is performing worse, then more money has to be

put into the port to find a solution which could allow it to work. Even when the solution is found, it's

likely that because the hardware doesn't naturally excel at the original task, it won't be fully utilized

doing a task it wasn't designed to do.

On a technical level, the differences I'm talking about are things like integer vs floating point speed;

general purpose vs streaming processing power; single threaded vs multi-threaded power. Things like memory

size and general speed are usually not going to be an issue which a port couldn't handle. The polygon count

on models could easily be increased or decreased to accommodate for a general speed difference. Different

quality/sized textures can be used to accommodate for memory restrictions of another console. But if the game

is pushing the floating point power of the baseline console, if a ported platform can't process floating point

numbers as quickly, then the solution becomes much harder.


But Resident Evil 4 used full unization of the gcn and ps2 hardware. It's the best looking game for cube, and one of the best looking games for PS2. Madden and NCAA Football always uses above average textures from all three consoles....NBA Live and FIFA i don't know. ESPN Football 2k5 got 9.0 scores on both Xbox and PS2 because it's the best looking football game on both platforms. Winning eleven 8 International got a 9.0 in graphics on both Xbox and PS2 because it was the best looking soccer game on PS2 with all the small touches EA Canada is to lazy to do with FIFA or they're limited with money spent. There is always an exception for EA Sports because they are the largest publisher.


Sony doesn’t need to pay as many developers as much money to develop exclusively because a large enough number (mostly Japanese) believe that Sony will place more of its units in households than any other console by a large enough margin. And by focusing on one, they can focus on making the game look the best for whatever it is being developed for, ignore the issue of having portable code, and develop a better game.


I don't know. PS3 games are generally more costly then 360 games because the CEll Broadband Engine is more complex then Xenon with it's 7 SPEs and a PPE at 3.2 GHz. Developers manage to know the hardware, but that takes time and money just like PS2. Final Fantasy 12 looks a lot better than say Ridge Racer 5 because a.) the textures are better b.) developers are finding more efficent game engines c.) video compression is better since 2000 (such as H264/X264).


I do believe that games most games won’t exceed 9GB of data with the exception of RPGs


Indeed.



They generally look much better than the real time engines games of this generation have to offer and you get to sit back and actually appreciate the graphical detail since you’re not fully engaged.


Looking at the Final Fantasy 13 gameplay screens, you don't really need any FMV at all. The GFX are on par with Final FAntasy X FMV. I know FF13 will do both game engine rendered and FMV, and it'll be on BD, but in Xbox 360's case, all the cutscenes can be rendered w/o FMV due to the DVD9.


And off of the low rate incoming like allowance or more commonly held jobs, a person under the age of 15 is probably not going to be able to save up to $600 - $700 (


When I was 15, Dreamcast was the best looking console out and it launched for $200. I bought it the first week with Sonic Adventure as my first game.


PS2 emulation for PC is still utterly slow even though the PS2 hardware is around 6 years old now


PCSX2 0.9.1 gets around 15 fps in game now, in 0.9.0 it was 4 fps. I didn't get it to work with the 0.8.0 build.


when asked if ps3 is more powerful than xbox360. i dont expect multiplatform game developers to give us the truth


Well, I looked at the bandwidth of the memory for both Xbox 360 and PS3. I found out something interesting.

Xbox 360 Specs

* 256 GB/s eDRAM internal logic to eDRAM internal memory bandwidth
* 32 GB/s GPU to eDRAM bandwidth (2 GHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle on a 64 bit DDR bus)
* 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth (700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) on a 128 bit bus)
* 21.6 GB/s front side bus (aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream)
* 1 GB/s southbridge bandwidth (aggregated 500 MB/s upstream and downstream)

PS3 SPEC

* 204.8 GB/s Cell Element Interconnect Bus (Theoretical peak performance)
* Cell FlexIO Bus: 35 GB/s outbound, 25 GB/s inbound (7 outbound and 5 inbound 1Byte wide channels operating at 5 GHz) (effective bandwidth typically 50-80% of total)[39]
* 51.2 GB/s SPE to local store
* Experimental Sustained bandwidth for some SPE-to-SPE DMA transfers - 78 to 197 GB/s.[3
* 25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz / 8 bits to a byte
* 22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) / 8 bits to a byte
* RSX 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
* System Bus (separate from XIO controller) 2.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read

PS3 does 48 GB/s RAM bandwidth vs. Xbox 360's 54.4 Gb/s RAM Bandwidth. Xbox 360 has 240 GFLOPS programmable and PS3 only has 211.2 GFLOPS programmable (source: Wikipedia) PS3 makes up the less bandwidth with a BD which can stream in uncompressed data so the Cell doesn't have to decompress data as much as Xbox 360 would to ballance the situation.


What you are paying for is the hardware that allows the PS3 to read Blue-Ray discs – which is the cost of the console.


The Blu-ray is the 2nd most costly componant in PS3 after Cell Broadband Engine (which must be most costly due to it being used in medical equipment by Mercury Systems.)


Counter-Strike and Fable are literally are PC games ported to the Xbox


Fable was released on PC after Xbox. It was actually Fable The Lost Chapters (the director's cut of Fable).


Also consider that the Cell is not yet a well known processor


Mercury Systems is advertising the hell out of it for medicial equipment. Hospitals will be buying in bulk if they realize all the money they save with this state-of-the-art chip. STI announced a dual core Cell Broadband Engine in the making with 16 SPEs and 2 PPEs at 3.2 GHz. May be a possible PS4 CPU.


2. "Xbox 360 has more than 3x the general purpose power of the PS3?" "Cell processor has no branch prediction?" "Xbox360 has more memory system bandwidth?" If you have read something suggesting either of the above, it's probably from [url]http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html[/url] that horrible article IGN posted


Yeah it's true. Wikipedia shows it on their webpage /w reliable resource. Wikipedia makes sure that the article is 100% true!


like Sony is definitely trying to add something to their controller though because it would be a bit disappointing of the controller returned to nothing more than buttons and the two sticks.


Wiimote only has 1 "A" button excluding 1 select, 1 start PS3 controller has X, Square, Triangle, and circle with more triggers. Nintendo thinks it gains in movement what it looses in buttons. I really don't know if it'll work or not because neither conosole is out and gamers haven't complained, spread rumors, buzzwords, etc.


Xbox360 drive is faster by a significant margin over the PS3's Blue-Ray drive


I believe it. BD is 50 GB vs. DVD's 8.5 GB. You need all that space for HD FMV, uncompressed PCM sound, and the uncompressed game code preventing the Cell from decompressing compressed textures and game engine code like the Xenon has to do with the extra bandwidth. Does it take longer to play a ROM without a ZIP File or in a ZIP file? It has to first decompress the ZIP file and then load the rom.


Current X360 are not even near the full DVD9 capacity


I don't know. I heard Bizzare Creations complaining that they had to compress the contents to fit DVD9.


In ten years I'll probably looking into 100-130" ultra flat TV with at least twice the 1080p resolution.


You won't need it until all the satellite channels broadcast in "2160p". I doubt all of them will broadcast in 1080p because H264 encoding hardware is expensive for broadcasters meaning 1080p would have to be as more popular as LCD TVs now. Now'll most of them are broadcasting to look good on any CRT standard-defination TV made in the late 1990s.


Game size is getting bigger slowly, but I believe it is being capped on the PC side by most developers not expecting DVD drives to be standard and coming out with multi-CD releases.


PC developers are getting large discounts on CD media in bulk because it's obsolete and Installshield uses CAB, BZIP2 (open source zip), or lossy audio compression like Vorbis. Everybody can make CDs nowadays and PC publishers can bid on the lowest price. Factory-made cDs last longer then DVDs because it has a lot less pits and scratches almost never do damage to the data layer. PC publishers want the media to last a long time.


PC games are lazily programmed for. When games are in development targeting the PC, they also target hardware specs near or at the top of the line for the future. They look great because the hardware they are on is more advanced, but the problem is that the features they are using require top of the line cards to even run decently (holding 30FPS). Most of them fall below that mark unless you’re looking at a wall and not much else if you’re running an “above average” card or anything less than. Whether or not they look better is kind of subjective as the overall look and feel of console graphics always seem different than that of a PC to me.


Yeah, I knew that. I can't wait for AMD to release a quad-core Athlon 64. If it get enough money, I could afford one. This and WinVista with multi-thread support will be the cat's meow. Right now I can not afford such CPU or even a dual socket motherboard for Athlon 64 X2 4800s. WinXP only uses 1 core which sucks.


The best thing about pricing is the way stuff ends up in england
U.S Ps3 = $599 and i think 1$ worth about 54p, so ps3 should be about £324.
but for some reason, U.K Ps3 = £425, GRRRRR


No, it's Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe wanting to rip off all Europeans with console prices and game prices because Sony knows Europeans will cash in that high and Americans won't (forcing the price down) The market shows that Europeans were more into the Commodore 64 (best selling computer of all time), ZX Sinclair Spectrum, Amiga whereas Americans were into NES, SNES, Genesis, Neo Geo games which cost a lot less and could be bought anywhere then the desktops listed above making the American gaming industry more profitable driving the price down anyways. When it was just hobby in Europe to collect computers, America already was big on hardcore Atari, Nintendo and Sega fans or something.


Unless you're trying to say that an old design like the RSX is somehow the same as a NEW GPU design; which wouldn't make any sense either since it would have as much chance of being a 7900 series card as a 7600 series


I wholeheartenly agree. It better be a Geforce 7900 before people start bitching it was a Geforce 7600. Knowing I'll have another game machine with lots of titles for it is better then a graphically superior PC any day. I mean I bought my last PS2 game 20 days ago, and my last Xbox game 10 days ago.

PC gamers have too much money to spend on hardware and for what? The hardcore ones will update teh GPU 4 times in PS3's life time and a 19" monitor isn't a 25" LCD TV! That's true.

Its possible to put a DUAL Cell processor

A dual-core Cell with 16 SPEs really would be something in 2011. We know 3.2 GHz is the boundry due to heat issues. Yea, the PS4 will at least have 16 SPEs.


Hmm i would probably agree with that. But my point was not that ps3 will be bad at running linux, just that the 8 times more powerful comment is slightly misleading, as it makes it seem like ps3 is like the most powerful computer aroun, when in reality you shouldn't compare it to other computers really, as the ps3 is first and foremost a games console, so while you can expect it to be top of the range at running games, you shouldn't expect it to be one of the best computers on the market.


Well the best supercomputer money can buy is the IBM BlueGene which is actually 6 Bluegenes which is what people tend to do. Obviously because 1 Blue Gene does 36.01 Teraflops while PS3 does 1.8 Teraflops. National Nuclear Security Administration got their BlueGene supercomputer (you say as singluar when talking about the whole thing) doing 207.3 TFLOPS

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Gene[/url]

Then PS3 has programmable Gigaflops and the amount is a lot less.


GoW pushes 360 to the limits a year after the 360 release.


GoW and Halo 3 both use the Unreal Engine 3.0 (says Microsoft Game Studios who bought a liscense) and it's the best looking 360 games to date. I am sure that the 360 hardware can manage better graphics engines like Unreal Engine 4 and Cytech 2 engine (using Direct X 10 and shader model 4.0)


What if Killzone has the graphics that Gears of War has?


Unreal Engine 3.0 is a DirectX 9.0 engine. We'll see superior graphics of both platforms once the graphic engines developed to use Direct X 10 are ported to consoles. We already know the X360 doesn't take advantage of all Direct X 10 features such as Shader model 4.0. PS3 uses OpenGL coz DirectX is exclusive to Microsoft and Dreamcast platforms.



The PS3's OS actually uses an entire SPE


I read that is the 8th SPE which isn't programmable for [i]game development[/i].


Actually, I think that VC-1 provides better PQ than H.264 at their respective max quality bit rates. More of the original content is lost with use of H.264. The benefit, of course, is more compression. It's a trade- off. If you have the storage capacity and the bandwith, use MPEG2 -- it provides superior PQ and it's cheaper. If you are more limited in storage space and/or bandwith, use VC-1 -- it's next in PQ and has a higher compressio ratio than MPEG2. If you're even more limited in storage space and/or bandwith, use H.264 -- superior compression ratio but third in terms of PQ.

However, from what I understand, all three codecs look great at their respective max quality bit rates. I doubt that the average viewer would/could tell the difference between them. Most people don't watch a movie with the intent to evaluate its PQ, let alone to do side-by-side comparisons of the same content encoded with different codecs. If MPEG2 is used at its max quality bit rate on BD50, it can provide better PQ than VC-1 and H.264, but I doubt that anyone but videophiles, media, and fanboy would care. That's one of the least of BD's benefits.


The PS3 comes with Bluray having 2 hrs on SL-BD or 4 hrs on DL-BD in MPEG2. HD-DVD has 100% MS VC1 films and 80% of good films are released under HD-DVD. You can not tell the difference between 1080p and 1080i picture wise on a 720p HDTV.

So even though HD-DVD is the clear winner in the immediate future, I am buying both players. The end. It's how I eventually solve my consoles wars problems.

I read how gamers want hollywood to use VC1 on Blu-ray, but hollywood will not listen to PS3forums. What's cheaper? MPEG2 on DL-BD or VC1 on SL-BD? If it's a draw money wise...I'd be laughing so hard!


You forgot the 3GB video of the CEO of Square swimming in a pool of money. That would make 25GB easy


That doesn't exist from my knowledge. He isn't billionare Scrooge McDuck off Ducktales. Ducktales is like you know for 8 yr olds. Well, at least i saw it at 8 yrs old.


That costs very little man hours to make the quality much better if they were to aim for a remake/compile.


You know if they stuck with MPEG and MPEG2 for each game, the programmer wouldn't have to mess with the game source code as much. If FFX13 is 15 GB then include it on DL-BD with the anthlogy.



You are also forgetting that the PS2 had a max of 480p output which was the best resolution for outputting the CG movies from Square-Enix games


If all these games were in an anthology....why would Squaresoft make 1920x1080 video if the PS2 FMV would be 720x480 anyways? I doubt Squaresoft has HD versions of the FFX/FFX2/FFXII video. :D It wouldn't make sense to me. Just like they didn't have HD video of any PS1 FMV they've created. Is it just me that believes that they never made HD video for those games?


you do know that SE would make WAY more profit if they distribute them through an online service.


I heard all about Sony's online service that allows you to purchase PS2 or PS1 games.

Problem is I have 512 Kbit broadband at home. In the future I'll have 3 Mbit. ISPs in the states just overcharge Wisconsinites on very little bandwidth. It's their damn fault! Not mine.


(don't know)


Its simple.

1/2 XDR 3.2 GHz
1/2 GDDR3 700 MHz

512 split isn't anything to complain about.

I have 3072 MB at 466 MHz which is fast dual channel memory, but not efficent. WinXP only uses 512 MB for itself leaving the rest wasted unless used for PC games which probably use 2 GB of the 3 GB avaliable. To sum this up my memory timings really suck compared to the XDR and I know it.


People keep saying games would work faster and smoother in an uncompressed nature. I'm a video editor, I'm not entirely sure if it works the same for games, but, go get a program called Virtual Dub. Open a video file in it, and completely uncompress it. A simple half hour tv show will now be about 30GB. Now run it, unless you have a VERY good machine, the video will not play smoothly. In video's anyway, compression is more than just a way to save space.


Trilogies?

PS2 games take up 4.4 GB (says 4.7, but partitioned less) ? That's 5 PS2 games on a single layer BD! 10 PS2 games on DL-BD and 20 PS2 games on QL-BD.

You know no publisher will have 10 PS2 games on one bd in the first 4 years. It's not going to like Mega Man X collection or Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Trilogies are honest worth.

Square-Enix would technically be able to fit all the Final Fantasy on SL-BD with room left over for Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.

FF1. 256k
FF2 256k
FF3 3 MB (FFVI Japan only)
FF4 (Final Fantasy 2 for SNES) 1 MB
FFV 2.5 MB
FF Tactics 500 MB
FFVII 1.775 GB
FFVIII 2.354 GB
FFIX 2.364 GB
FFX - 4.1 GB
FFX2 - 3.73 GB
FFXII - 4.4 GB

[b]SUBTOTAL[/b] 19.230 GB

Chrono Cross. 1.22 GB
Chrono Trigger 500 MB (PSX version)
Final Fantasy Origins 488 MB

[b]Total[/b] 21.438 GB


Alberta doesn't have PST, only GST, which is now down to 6% and will be 5% sometime later on. Maybe I should go on a road trip to Alberta just to buy a PS3...

I was kinda surprised how less the launch price increased from PS2 -> PS3 in Canada. PS2 was $500, PS3 (20gb) is only $550, and the 60gb one being 650. Pretty damn good deal (until you see the price after tax... *shudders*).


Considering most (85%) Blu-ray players are $1000....PS3 is pretty inexpensive!

BD video player + 1080p videogame for less.

Why is it so inexpensive you ask?

A.) The BD drive is made by Sony.
B.) the PS3 actually costs $900 to manufacture
C.) Sony is using the PS3 to get Blu-ray to take off on the ground running.
D.) The BD drive will break after 18 months forcing you to get another PS3.


If PS4 is only Cell with 16SPEs the debate would be the same as with nintendo Wii now. "Why release marginally faster console than previous console


Wait, Cell is a "super computer on a chip" (quote from Mercury Systems) so two cell broadband engines are almost twice as fast. If PS4 had 1024 MB GDDR4 and 1024 MB XDR at 3.2 GHz than you might have 7.2 Teraflops performance. [1.8 x 4 = 7.2 TF] By 2011, this kind of hardware would cost you at least $500. I am just staying in realms of reality because I know dual core cell was announced by STI, and teh ATI Crossfire 1 GB GDDR3 GPU is out. I refuse to get bizzare with tech specs of the PS4 based on it having 7.2 TF performance.


Has it ever crossed your mind Sony hasn't talked big on RSX because there maybe isn't anything to talk big about.


I hope it's based on Geforce 7900, but I'll live with teh current Geforce 7800 spec because that's still awefully good. Better then Xbox 360 and developers have yet to meet Xbox 360's hardware limits such as running Unreal Engine 3.5 on it. It'll be like the difference between Unreal Champtionship and Unreal Champtionship 2 on Xbox.


"to finish a game done is hard enough under the best circumstances, and to finish a game on hardware that's evolving is even worse"


I had no idea that they lowered the clock speed to be able to complete games. I found out that Suse Linux 10 lowers clock speed to 1 GHz on Athlon 64s because the other 1.6 GHz would be totally wasted.


I still think that there is some intellectual property protection going on with Nvidia regarding the RSX. Both Sony and Nvidia may have a dual binding agreement not to release anything on this GPU until a certain time.


I read somewhere that the Geforce 7900 is cheaper to manufacture then the Geforce 7800 because the G80 core is using 0.11 micron process instead of 0.13 micron process and that reduces heat issues. The fansink is the same size on the PCI-e version.
Plus it's using 230 million transistors instead of 270 million transisters that suprass the GB/s on the Geforce 7800.


direct competitors the Radeon 9500-9800 series and nVidia had to resort to doing Half precision (16bit FP)


I have a Radeon 9800 XT and it plays 90% of my PC titles fine at 1280x1024 which is good on a 17" CRT monitor.


Nvidia's last console GPU was NV2A for the XBOX. It was derived from the PC GPU NV20 through customisation that gave it the edge. It had 2 vertex shaders and 2 ALUS per shader pipe - features only found in next generataion NVIDIA NV30 GPU that was still to come. The NV20 of the time had only 1 vertex shader pipe


I know it runs games at 800x600. Please don't say it's really, really obsolete. It's not even old school yet like 16-bit consoles. Forza Motorsport and Far Cry Instincts came out only last year and i thought it was decent looking on my TV. Not to mention devaluing my 66 Xbox game collection.


Suppose you could play Gran Turismo 5 with selectable Japanese content, like soundtracks, or even voice prompts in Japanese with subtitles. Suppose you could mix and match almost everything. Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast was available in this form, and it was much cooler to play with the Japanese voiceovers. I'm hoping that this is one way that developers take advantage of the Blu-ray's capacity. I would think that it would ease production costs too, since you'd only be producing one product.


Say developers didn't encode voice overs in AD-PCM (which is what it is normally) and instead use something better like aoTuV Vorbis at 128 kbps. You can fit 1.5 hrs of voice under 100 MB. If other platforms used a highly lossy format like aoTuV vorbis...you could achieve this on a DVD9. I heard voice files on Xbox 360 and a 128 kbps mp3 sounds good enough for listening thru two stereo speakers. A aoTuV Vorbis 1.1.2 at 64 kbps (q-9) sounds clean so developers could fit 2 hrs of voice in 100 MB space. I have a aoTuV vorbis music collection so i know a little what i am talking about.


Whatever you heard is incorrect. NURBs are hard to animate, and Sub-D (sub-division surfaces) are the way to go . Not to mention, "polygons" don't really exist, what you are talking about are vertex, which are what "poly"-gons are comprised of. Basically, a N-gon. N being however many vertex there are connected together.


PSP natively supports Nonuniform rational B-splines so PS3 must support it. I know both platforms share the PSP GUI.

NURBs take up less hardware spec to do the same amount of graphics as polygons because they're "lighter"


ut most definitely not the BEST football game out there


What is? ESPN Football 2k5? because you're a Sega fan or something? ESPN Football 2k5 had very good graphics for Xbox, but you got to listen to John Madden talk and he is the most popular football announcer now otherwise he wouldn't be be commentary for the Super Bowl or Monday Night Football.


It wasn't really multi-platform, there were two different teams that did each different version, exclusively for each console, utilizing its strengths and minimizing its weaknesses.


Both games were from Capcom Development Studio 4 (who did RE0, RE, RE2, RE3, Code Veronica too).


Nope, the Blu-Ray drive is the most expensive


Taking Nintendo's idealogy (the absolutely right one) that game code doesn't take up much space (as in dont' need Blu-ray/HD-DVD) would shave $100 off the PS3 price. Then have nexpak DVD cases for PS3 games because PS3 games will be on DVD too. PS3 could still have H264 encoded HD FMV on the DVD9. Announce an external Blu-ray-ROM like Microsoft's external HD-DVD-ROM.

Now we know Sony isn't smart enough to do external Bluray rom have have a internal one for everyone.....developers should fill it on with "How they made the game" movies and unlockable emulated games which could give competition indirectly against Wii's Virtual Console.

Examples

Ninja Gaiden Black has Ninja Gaiden (NES)
Metroid Prime has Metroid (NES)
Sonic Mega Collection has Ristar, Comix Zone
Prey has Black Jack, 7 Stud Poker, Space Invaders and Pacman clones at the bar.
Tekken 5 had a old school shoot 'em up game
Ridge Racer for PSP had a old school car maze game
Moto GP 2006 has Pong, and others.


No commercial OS (wait, lets also include free ones like Linux) is currently built to take advantage of multi-core CPU's because when they were made, none were in the market (Remember, XP is from 2001).


You should know because PS3 is going to have one of the latest versions of K Desktop Environment on it. There is also the half-open source Solaris Unix supporting dual core Athlon 64 or Core 2 or dual core Cell (in the future).

Commerical Linux servers like Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 support duo-core or two duo core CPUs. In my opinion, Fedora Project 4 is just a puppet distrubution for Redhat to get their meaty hands on it and charge people for a liscense /w tech support.


Yeah, he is sort of lovable, and he is in the pro football hall of fame.


First of NURBs are a HUGE pain tot work with


I never heard that it was a pain to work with.


Pursuit force


Really? I never read that review for PSP. IGN gave it a 8.4 / 10. Seemed like a nice looking PSP title! I am trying to buy Diseaga and Xenosaga while keeping $400 in my account. It's pretty hard. I wanted to buy the whole .Hack series, but i forced myself not to spend uncontrolibly.


Also PSP GPU and RSX have no relation what so ever


Polygons have been used since Sega Saturn's Panzer Dragoon (1995) so NURBs are like polygons. It's like GIF and PNG. One is better then the other, but for some reason both are used today probably due to broadband sppeds.


That said they could maybe still use BR9 discs


Oh really? Thats sort of interesting. Does Sony want to save 10 cents on every disc, because they wouldn't be using less materal to fabracate the BD9. I original thought a BD9 was a 3" mini-BD. Seeing a mini-BD would be cool.


rofl...yeah, that'll put PS3 on top for sure...LOL



PS3 is already on top. The Cell and RSX throws out 1.8 Teraflops and right now the first generation titles have 211 Gigaflops programmable which should increase because why would Sony put out 1.8 Teraflops in the specs for?


Also, I always think its interesting people worry so much about the $100-$200 price difference between the consoles


I don't have any problems spending money on games. If I didn't spend money on Diseaga 2 or Xenosaga Episode III...I would have $550! Diseaga 2 is going to be very rare, and it's the #1 PS2 game this year at gamerankings.com. IT BEAT FF12! There is still time.

Don't chance it. Heck save your PS2 and wear it out first. My PS3 is going to last me four years like my Gamecube and Sega Dreamcast have.


I realize that the Sony company has been awesome when it comes to video games


Awesome at JRPGs. My PS collection is full of greats like Lunar 1 & 2, Grandia, Legend of Dragoon, Final FAntasy Origins/Anthlogy/Chronicles/Tactics VII/VIII/IX. Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Star Ocean 2, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Chrono Cross,

PS2 was the same way. Xenosaga Episode 1/2/3, Final Fantasy X & X2, Star Ocean 3, Alitar Iris 1&2, Shin Mensei Tensei trilogy, Breath of Fire V, Dark Cloud 1 & 2, Grandia II, III, Xtreme, Diseaga 1&2.

I don't know about the other genres well. IT's killer department was RPGs....nobody comes close in this genre. All the talent is on PS and PS2.


irst, $100-200 makes a huge difference. If sony hope to sell roughly 10 million units in the first 12 months that amounts to $1-2 Billion.


For most poeple. I find the PS3 better then a Geforce 7950 GX2 any day. The Geforce 7950 is superior and will one day fall below PS3 price point by a $100, but this alone won't change my opinion out the PS3. I don't know what will happen five years down the road.


I think sony did a fine job on the PsP ,and they will on the Ps3


What will tick me off is if teh PS3 had heatsink problems and OS glitches like the Xbox 360 had last year. Remember, the Xbox 360 would crash and give error messages.


I think the 360 GUI is just strange. I don't like it. I think it's very non-intuitive.


Well it doesn't bother me because I am never in it. Game booting on a cold boot is all i care about, friend and yes on occasion i played MP3s on the X360 on some of the racing games AND I STILL HAVEN'T BOUGHT A 2nd CONTROLLER SINCE JANUARY! Shame on me! Games expenses are more important then friends it seems. That's the disadvantage of being not so middle class. Tough to make these hard decisions, but i do manage and get some games i want.


Grand Theft Autos have never been "loyal" to anyone


Yeah, I got sick of running mafias two years ago. It only does so much. So it has pretty graphics, clever game play, and a bunch of licensed music. That won't stop people from playing. What i am saying is we need to say more Halo, Mario and Final Fantasy then "Grand THeft Auto".


So basically you're saying that quadrupling memory capacity quadruples performance


Hell no! The IBM Rochester (Blue Gene prototype) does 36.01 TFLOPS in Sept 29, 2004 and that was the fastest computer on Earth at that time so it can't be more then 7.2 Teraflops. I can say anything here I want I thought. Feel free to ignore me.

Wouldn't it be great if PS4 had 2 GB of futuristic RAM though....half XDR/half GDDR4

"Better" isn't always better. I'd prefer that if they have to use a lossy compression scheme, they use one which preserves the fidelity of the source material. I'd much rather they use lossless techniques, since I'm not sure how efficient it would be to use a number of compression types in the same sound engine for voices, sound effects and music. I want everything to sound crisp, spacious and hifi on my sound system to match the highly detailed graphics.

You don't need 16-bit voice-only audio in redbook standard. You got 128 KBps Vorbis and at 80 kbps it sounds better the He-AAC according to Hydrogen Forums which is like 2 channel 16-bit audio.

[url]http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=35438[/url]
[url]http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/VideoSon/MP3-WMA-AAC-OGG-qualite-kbps-evaluation-sujet-84950-1.htm[/url]

As for Processing power, your iPod with a Zilog z80 CPU can decode Ogg Vorbis (but since it doesn't have vorbis, mp3) or what ever CPU is in your average mp3 player. But the obvious truth is have lossness codecs because space isn't an issue. (I'm justifing that Vorbis at 128kb in a RPG can fit all Japanese voiceovers on a NTSC DVD9 under 100 MB).


A 12x DVD drive only reads at 120.96Mbps at one point on the disc. It is slower at every other point on the disc


GAWD. 12x DVD-ROM came out in 2001 for PCs. BD-ROM came out in 2006 for PCs. And you're comparing 5 year old technology to future technology? What's wrong with you people! I might as well pwn all of you and say Holographic Versatile Disc (3.9 terabytes) has better bandwidth and more space then BD. [b] BD's are obsolete and suck! [/b]

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/Hvd_disc.jpg[/img]
Pwns BD


A multicore Cell with larger LSRam dumps amd a unified cache between PPE cores would murder just about anything I could even think of short of BioProcessing or electron deflection


IBM, could you please make a X86 compatiable version?


Wow, alot of people have voted the "G80" selection in the poll now


It's wishful thinking. All those people want G80 equiped Ps3s for $500. I want it too, but it's up to Sony whether or not they can "afford it" A G80 core goes for a heafty price. Tigerdirect is selling the BFG Geforce 7900 GTX OC for $450 USD! Unless Nvidia can have less transisters on the RSX then Geforce 7900, it will be more expensive to make. It's possible because the Geforce 7950 has less transisters then Geforce 7800 while doing 76.8 GB/sec bandwidth.


Will they make something that looks remarkably like the Cell


Sony wouldn't put 150 million into creating STI if they couldn't get an evolution of Cell Broadband Engine v1.0 five years down the road. So a Cell Broadband Engine sequel would seem likely. (the latest version around launch of PS4)


The load time is steady on Blu-Ray



Yea, don't go with Xbox 360 because the loading times in PS3 are simular and games like God of War where PS2 loading times are speedy (proving inferior hardware to xbox could have as speedy times). It took you by suprise in 2006 when the first 18 months of PS2 launch was noticably worse with the exception of Final Fantasy X because loading times was streamed instead of loaded at once. Unusual for PS2 games of 2001.


yes i agree but can u explain to me which is actually better in todays games (ps2 as well as ps3) loading at once or streaming?

thanx


If the XDR RAM is able to be processed by RSX wouldn't the total RSX bandwidth be 48 GB/sec.....only 28 GB/sec short of the Geforce 7950 GX2? Asside from frame rate...what will 28 GB/sec more bandwidth do RSX can't achieve?

# 25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz / 8 bits to a byte
# 22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) / 8 bits to a byte

But I admit few my privately owned PC games stash take advantage of the G70....

G70 examples

Elder scrolls iv
FEAR (had frame rate problems with the Radeon 9800 XT)
Doom 3
Black and White 2
Guild Wars Factions

G60/Radeon 9800 XT

* everything else is quite playable


The PS3 DOES NOT support DX10. That is just the microsoft API.


Yeah


What the heck are you talking about Resistance is a piece of **** man it can't even go toe to toe with Call of Duty 3 let alone Mass Effec


I've had heard rumors of Insomniac Games making Ratchet and Clank 5. You should go yay! Another Ratchet sequel to sink my teeth in 1080i Dolby DTS 5.1 Surround!


Gears of War running the same engine has much more graphical fidelity than UT2007


I Can't tell. I was playing UT2004 yesterday and both games look better. Maybe we don't need anything better then Unreal Engine 2.5 because the game I was playing had as good as it gets game play. Games can suffer because 66% of the focas is on making pretty textures and lighting effects. Take Ninety-nine Nights for example. Great graphics, but horrible game play.


Also how about magnificent Lair


Dude, is that a Panzer Dragoon clone? I like Panzer Dragoon Orta for Xbox because Graphics are a 10! I also would pay $60 for Panzer Dragoon Saga at present, but i know the game would go for much more money.


. So It is the g80 totally I say


Probably. If Nvidia can achieve pulling out 78 GB/s with less transisters then Geforce 7950 GX2, and i think they can because the company has prototypes for three years in the future.


I expect it to be a pretty hefty cutting edge machine


I agree it's technology-advanced for $500 console in November. Not 2008, not 2010, but for 2006.BTW, Nintendo is interested in 1080i gaming in 5 years. It's gonna be a 3 core Broadway-compatible at 3.2 GHz


Well thanks guys, lol. And the thing about saying RSX could have 512mb


If you want your PS3 to be $600 with the 20 GB HDD go for it. Sony is loosing $400 on each one already.
The goal is to make PS3 cheaper to manufacture, not more expensive. If Sony added everything, Sony would be hurting financially worse then now. Their only good product is the Playstation. Few people are buying TVs, computers, dvd players, car cd players, mp3 players from Sony and their about to abandon the electronics industry if PS3 doesn't do well and rely on their hollywood and music industry. I doubt you realize how much finanical stress the E3 spec is for Sony.


nd I'm pretty sure that PC graphics cards reach pretty close to 1920x1080@120fps now


Now, I want to ask for a Geforce 7950 GX2 for Christmas so my PC games can have that framerate. If I make that choice I won't be able to run Halo 2 or Crisis or Far Cry 2. And I don't exactly have anybody to show it off too. (except posting screenshots on imageshack.us.)


There will be no more XDR. Cell is designed from the ground up to run with 256MB


Exactly. The only specs changing in the PS2 was the CPU from 294 MHz to 299 MHz (PStwo) and the DVD-ROM from 4x to 6x (PStwo) The 5 MHz extra on the CPU was to reduce heat generated by early PS2s.


Some peoples expectations are beyond unrealistic


Yeah, PS3 isn't a bleeding edge videogame console. It's high end. I don't know how you can say it's 3 years ahead of it's time like Sega Dreamcast was. This had everything to do with the SuperH 4 at 200 MHz while PS3 was easily superior (1/3 more powerful) three years later. That was before i was into high-end PC graphics. I got hyped on a year old system in 1999 and bought 42 games to day for the platform.....


Sony is playing a different game here. Their E3 presentation had next to nothing to do with showing the gamers what they want and was more about showing investors what they want.

Sony isn't going to flinch or go into damage cotnrol mode just because they have an opponent who is flinging mud in every possible manner. They are the market leader. Sony is merely acting as anyone would when they are the leader in their market..

It pisses off a lot of people to no end, but the gamers voted with their dollars for the past two generations to put Sony on top by no small margin beyond their competitors. If they want to make a $500 and $600 console then so be it. The market will be there even if it isn't the same market that was there before. They've said it themselves "Our strength is in the higher end market".

That pisses even more people off. THEIR idea of gaming is the same status quo that has been fed to you for the past two decades. If you are a gamer then you are a fourteen year old kid who waits til Christmas to get anything you want. But the real story here is that the Playstation generation has grown up and they want their console to grow with it.

The ONLY way to make this happen is to have some high end hardware with robust functionality to appeal not only to the gamer base from ages before, but also people like me who happen to be a little older and out making the real money. Again, this pisses some people off. Sony wants to throw a party and asks you to dress formally. There will always be the jackasses who think that its wrong for anyone to throw a party anywhere that you can't wear a T-shirt and torn jeans to.

The PS3 is not built, designed, nor marketed to said people. THAT is why Sony has been acting "stuck up" lately. If you have an HDTV and a DOlby 5.1 or 7.1 Surround sound system, then you're NOT going to complain about an internet connected HD-movie/gaming machine with exclusive content and service, now are you?

Oh, and if Mr. T-shirt says "But not everyone has an HDTV" tries to say it's wrong for Sony to cut people off like that... Just tell that to Sony's Corporate Office that is seeing record breaking Bravia sales I'm sure you'll give them a change of heart. Go get a Wii and wait for the PS3s price to drop if it really hurts you so much, but don't fake it by saying a $400 console with expensive peripherals and a pay-to-play online service that acts as an extender to said companies Operating System monopoly is the "affordable" solution and purely a "gaming machine".


I agree with you on the players choice where money goes. My friends all have PS2s which certainly means something. This is where all the traditional gamers go....and they have no where else but PS2 or Xbox.

Sony has better racing, RPGs, and platform games then Xbox 360. box 360 has some fun first person shooters, but that's just my opinion. Prey, GRAW, Perfect Dark Zero and Call of Duty 2 rock!

Don't worry, I'm just playing Xbox 360 till PS3 comes out.


The whole deal with that was that Konami promised Microsoft an exclusive MGS game and when MGS2:S was announced,


I own MGS2 Substance for Xbox and I thought it came out before the same game for PS2. It was suppose to excite xbox fans because it was discussed so often during the 2001 release. It was suppose to help sell the xbox because PS2 had 80% of the popular sequels coming out.


Anyway, Blu-ray is going to be quite a stumbling block for PS3s competitors as time goes on


Not if the Xbox 360 games fit on a single DVD9. Another point is a BD-25 looks no more cooler then a DVD9 by looking at it. You wont' be able to put it into your computer unless you can afford a BD-ROM.


How the textures are uncompressed, how the game and audio content has run up the size of the entire game so far to 22GBs or more, and may end up being 35gigs (GAH!!)


There is a yeild problem with DL-BD so DL-BD video will run $50 This means no PS3 games will be DL-BD at launch...get it outta your head. There probably is goign to be a few PS3 games on DVD9 because in my opinion it was a Xbox 360 port and the compression didn't need to [i]unevolve[/i] such as sports games.


But the poor Wii will be left out in the cold.


I played Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast 1 hour ago and Wii pwns those graphics. I admit Sonic Adventure was colorful, high resolution, and sufficiant for "fun". You can't go wrong with the best selling Dreamcast game! Not because i am in poverty, but because i felt like it.


t's looking like the Wii will take off like a rocket as people pounce on the more affordable system,


Oh. I am wealthy enough to own all three consoles + games (whenever i get my hands on PS3). Europeans can say that's because Americans afford the cool ****. The Wii won't delude me from this years goal...the PS3 and Geforce 7950 GX2.


Personally I think that the Wii is fairly expensive for what you are getting


Because it's sold at a $30 loss. It's using the Apple G3's 750 CX CPU (cheap) and make the latest game tools compatible with a Gekko (hense the Gecko on steroids thing) with max resolution of 800x600 with 24-bit color. The same resolution i ran Unreal Tournament and in 1999 and Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction in 2001. You know how many Nintendo fans are on battlenet? Millions. You know how many gamers would buy Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction for Wii? Millions. It'll outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl!



Second, online gameplay


Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction gets my vote! Port it to Xbox 360 too.


at instills trust in Microsoft, meaning the consumers will go back to them again and again


Windows users have no choice. Microsoft gives us gamers DirectX so i forgive them for thier tyrant like monopoly.


Theres nothing worse than seeing another company make something way better than something you brought in to the industry. and seen as though there has been a big silence on the subject for a while now


It was like that 15 years ago. Buying a NES in '88 because those things keep breaking (due to cheap componants, and dust) and having Sega Genesis coming out in January '89 or September '89 with Phantasy Star II and Alter Beast. Some of the hype was that the Motorola 68000 was only found in the Commodore Amiga 500 (cost $1000 at in '89) with 1 MB of RAM! That was a lot back then....(like 1 GB of RAM now). Today, you can emulate Turrican 2 for free with WinUAE.


100 dollars more for Blu-ray..hmmmm sounds good


Put it in contexts. A BDRW costs $500 - $550!


Blu-Ray players are going to retail at around $800 to $1200 at launch


The problem here is to make people want BD video in the first place. Having a sticker on the retail box won't have a affect if poeple don't choose to ungrade. I want too.


at does what you say oblivion does for you.


I know elder scrolls iv oblivion has grass and lots of it. EA Sports was talking grass in PS3 version of Madden Football 2007 which lead people to believe that Xbox 360 couldn't do 3D polygon grass. There is Kameo and Oblivion having 3D grass. Xbox 360 version of Madden NFL 2007 looks entirely astroturf (concrete painted green) whereas PS3 has fieldterf (fake 3D grass). (Fieldterf doesn't die in 30 degree weather like Ford Field (Detroit, Michigan)

(Rumor: CFL Players go to NFL games because NFL Teams play a lot better)


Tell me, who is the next president of America?


Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain as Vice President.


This would leave around 7BG for game data, but for games relying on pre-rendered scenes to tell and develop the story, multiple DVDs may be requir



Easiest solution: encode all the 720 video in H264/VC-1

Normal solution: encode all the FMV in Bink Video at 1000x660 at 900 kbps which is higher then NTSC, but lower resolution the 720p.

Hard Solution: Crop video so you can fit as much 720p video on 1 DVD9 as possible.


Insomniac cannot use space on a disk well, and have a massively bloated game.


Insomniac is using LPCM for all the audio. All the movies are Bink Video in HD (1280x720's look awesome at 900 kps on PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360) and last is the texture data has a 2:1 compression ratio. I was just thinking of some sloppy obsolete codecs and lossness compression they would use.


Any logical person would of pick the second option for the simplest fact of suprising and wowing everyone


Anything running at 720p is good enough for me. I think 1080p as a free bonus because I don't own a 1080p TV.


I'm not buying a single HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movie till there is a winner in the format war.


Aint it true. See, Womble I can write a lot!

Heres some more


I'm not buying a single HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movie till there is a winner in the format war.


The loosing format is not going to disappear Betamax. These are cheap formats that have various usages for storing data. There will be blank discs of both formats regardless of popularity. Nero 7 has Bluray and HDDVD supported and functional VC-1 encoder is out at doom9.org. If you're wonderign why it's free it's because it's beta, but functional. In binary forum too /w installer even! Not command prompt encoder like OpenAVS.


trust me, microsofts launch is all about them getting to the 10 million in console sales than the competition


Microsoft is rich enough to launch 1080p hardware with 5.1 surround sound onto the streets only $50 more dollars then Wii on November 19th. Halo 3 comes out November 17th! Though I will be at Wal-mart at midnight this doesn't guarentee me a PS3.


But the whole point is that Blu-ray is being used for Games, Movies and Consumer Archival use


Exactly, but but the logical way is to buy PS3 now, use 3 DVD9s (less expensive then 1 Samsung SH-B022 + SL-BDR) on your current DVD burner. You can exactly share your BD media with friends because BD-ROMs aren't common place in PCs. Wait until it is common place.


Microsoft were a bit too early to market


And PC graphics were 3 years ahead of their time! I was running games like Dungeon Siege and Neverwinter Nights and Elder Scrolls III Morrowind at 720p long time ago. I was running Half-life 2 at 720p when it came out on November 2004. No games had the PS3 level of detail because none of the current game engine technology existed in 2002.


you need an X360 to even use it, that's past the £425,


Exactly. PS3 and Blu-ray is one. And non-gamer HD-DVD enthusasts aren't buying a Xbox 360 for the HD-DVD attachment. Though this was true for PS2 in 2000, it's got a little funny in 2000 because PS2 literally converted the whole country of Japan to DVD video. Before PS2, their DVD video market was nichi!


Microsoft’s position doesn’t look very good if you ask me


What are you talking about! Their business department dealing with everything Windows is making 4 billion annually in stock value. That's why whenever I say I hate Microsoft in Public I always get noticed. Without Windows, Corperate America would fall a part!


’m not saying those things make the XBox360


Yeah, Xbox 360 graphics didn't exist on the streets three years ago so it can't be horrible! You have to wait another 2 years before you can start saying Xbox 360 graphics look ugly because by then we'll have PC GPUs with 2 Gigabytes of GDDR4 RAM with DirectX 10 acceleration with games that fully support that kind of texture bandwidth. I'm thinking Unreal Tournament 2010 (unreal engine 4) or amongst those lines.


I still don't think 512MB is future proof


No ****! I got 3072 MB DDR2 plus the 256 MB GDDR3 in my PC and PS3 isn't out yet.


Yeah but tHATS A PC WITH A **** ARCHITECTURE!

CONSOLES have dedicated UNIQUE, MADE FOR THE JOB ARCHITECTURE!

It doens't matter about the RSX and its ram compared to how it connect to the rest of the ssytem.


It's AMD64/X86-64 dual core ARCHITECTURE! It was a Xmas gift so i'm happy and it's not Core 2 Duo because it predates it.


Not outside the PowerPC in the cell.


The Cell is a supercomptuer capiable of 2.18 Teraflop, but with a Geforce 7900 GTX 512 MB videocard addiction....my PC can run any PC game released this year or next year at 1920x1024 with 4x anti-aliasing. And if you've got the cash on hand....you have a brilliant "PC3" already

And **** I can emulate any console PS2 or before. I can't run DC because i have dump games thru FTP via Phantasy Star Online (but i got Chankast 0.25 to work)


Heh, which bit are you talking about? Its got a PowerPC core, but the archicture is nothing to do with PCs.


[i]You said before

Yeah but tHATS A PC WITH A **** ARCHITECTURE!

CONSOLES have dedicated UNIQUE, MADE FOR THE JOB ARCHITECTURE!

It doens't matter about the RSX and its ram compared to how it connect to the rest of the ssytem.[/i]


And the bit you've missed out is the architecture. How are you connecting your gfx card? PCI-e?


Not too many Socket 940 motherboards are AGP.


I strongly suggest you understand that you're not talking to an idiot


I read your post of the year. I admire your work. Wasn't a programmer, but i like most of us just play the end result (and read the official tech specs). I don't see bugs unless it slows down or the player moves the camera into the wall evident in many n64 games, Super Mario Sunshine, and Star Fox Adventures.


Microsoft position is looking very bright


They control Direct X and therefore are in some minimal control of what goes on PC game developer. How do you make a stable game on sometimes stable or unstable operating system depending on how long it's been since your last format actually. They're the ones that have to make the game run when programs are starting to crash due to trogan horses or spyware. Okay, point is they're popular with PC game developers.

Xbox 360 is selling well because it's the only 8th generation console on the market. In many ways Microsoft is competing against itself in two areas. The hardcore/traditional console market and the hardcore PC market (untouched by Mac/Linux if you ignore console market). Microsoft needs another first person shooter besides Halo like Perfect Dark Zero, but a PC version of Perfect Dark Zero. FPS has got to be #1 genre.


Xbox original does not have superior technology to the PS2


Doesn't have superior game engine technology. The MHz in the RAM/GPU/CPU are a bit higher then PS2 meaning maybe there is a visible improvement in graphics. I think Xbox as a Gamecube with a Geforce 3.


eople do not mention the difference between the PS2 and Xbox


How could you not mention it? I hear this difference often offline. Remember when people wanted the Xbox version of GTA Double Pack because it has a graphics/frame rate improvement. That sent ripples across the community that Xbox was cooler to own then PS2 was. Same thing happens Madden Football 2k7 and Winning Eleven Soccer 8 International where people bought the Xbox version for the increase in frame rate and anti-alaysing. However Madden wins PS2 hottest game in America.


There's more to it than that, but I'll spare you the gory details what of went on in that machine


I already know it. Got the game collection to prove it.


I think it would definately be prettier but I don't know if they would do anything too different.


Raise the clock speeds of everything. If it came out this November, it may of been 1.5 Teraflops instead of only 1 teraflop.


because the ps3 will be capable of doing much more


If developers start making excellent sequels to launch titles then I'll keep supporting it. If not I'll support it minimally and suppport the console with good games or i'll collect really old games by going to the game store and paying too much (less then a PS3 game, but more then what a SNES/Genesis title is worth. I want a Neo Geo, but don't have the money. Forced to play Blazing Star / Pulstar on Neo Rage X emu. Fun games, just GFX outdated, and the cart versions are $200 or more to own.


The PS3's controller is old technology


Certainly it looks like a Dual Shock from the PS1 era. Don't mind it, they know it's the best selling controller ever...MS is teasing Sony for having a popular product so their own fans don't leave due to cowardly acts.


Why are people largely ignoring the Xbox 360?


I dunno. It's still popular in St. Croix County, Western Wisconsin because it's a Xbox and there is a Winner (Xbox 360) and Loser, Gamecube. Same thing with handhelds. There is a Winner, NDS, and a loser, Playstation Portable. Though it is much harder to draw a fine line between PSP and NDS. Neither side wants to admit they're the losing format so I got this information via Target and Wal-mart sales.


Why is the PS2 and Xbox selling better than the 360


Because PS2 is the best selling console of all time says Guinness World of Records. Xbox is the primary competitor to the best selling console of all time.


No, it is selling better than the original Xbox at the same time in it's life cycle.


Oh really? I don't sound excited beacuse i got one already.


Wi-fi is not good for gaming due to lag/latency, or whatever you want to call it


Then explain to me why can you go online with just 1 MBit and have a decent connection with first person shooters (UT2004, Counter Strike source, FEAR, Doom 3) or RPGs (Guild Wars, Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft, Everquest) and then 10 Mbit connection with 5 other people still is solid as long as everyone is patched with the same patch.


Hahaha fits your statement perfectly


Yeah it does destroy Xbox 360, but games for 360 are running at 720p and so are the ones on PS3. I think they're thinking like Nintendo which is about about low-end 480p graphics starting at $249.99. The point is majority of gamers have 720p TVs, why even make 1080p support in games? At least for the remainer of 2006. So PS3 can not destroy Xbox 360 at 720p resolution, neither console breaks a sweat there.


The Cell isn't going to run Windows XP for the mass market


lol. GNU software......


My 3 year old athlonXP 2200+ rips MP3 from CD in 10secs


My PC can rip MP3 at q=5 in 4 seconds. It's on a fresh (3 days old) installation....

I know there is nothing that supports Vorbis except PC/PPC, but it's a nice encoder. Does PSP v2.5 have vorbis supported?

P.S. I have having hard time deciding whether or not I like AuToV Vorbis or he-AAC better.


"Cell kicks the crap out of Intel/AMD


With the exception of Intel/AMD running a Geforce 7950 GX2 or G80 GPU (Geforce 8800 GTX). Something that costs a "PS3" as of now.

[img]http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/06/05/geforce_7950_gx2/7950gx2front.jpg[/img]
[img]http://images.tomshardware.com/2006/06/05/geforce_7950_gx2/image011.gif[/img]

"Having a PS3 on a PCIe card" Priceless.



Really it is outstanding and insane for PS3 to be so under price and only cost 600 bucks


The equivalent PC GPU is $450, but the best CPU and motherboard for PC costs $1,400 and that isn't equal to Cell Broadband Engine. Though I read somewhere that Mercury Computer Systems will make the co-processor Cell run with a Intel Xeon on Windows XP. The config will cost you a lot of money....$2000.


120fps


Maybe that is possible at 720p, but impossible at 1080p even for PS3.


But not all games need to have high framerates,


Exactly. RPGs, racing genre run great at 30 fps. First/Third Person Shooters and Fighting games need 60 fps. I've been living off PS2 racing games and RPGs for a long time so i am confortable with 30 fps because it is all PS2 can handle.


there are a ton of PS3 games already at 60fps


cool! I didn't know if "a ton" were running at 60 fps. I thought it was mostly 30 fps due to lack of programmer skill and experience with the hardware.


It sure would be interesting to see if Sony can make RSX and Cell on a single die the way they did with the EE in the Playstation Two


Whoa. The EE is on a single die? That's amazing. Not even gamecube had that.


As for the RSX... yes it is teh pwnage


Yep. I agree.


The G71 architecture has been confirmed as "final"


Well G71 is a G70 with less transistors and less transistors means cheaper to manufacture. I wouldn't doubt it.


n two months we will se new nextgen directx10 nvidia gpu..


Just say Geforce 8800 GTX. It's better then "new nextgen directx10 nvidia gpu"


720p is low-resoltuon on a PC.


I'm afraid i have to agree. On a PC, nothing is acceptable below 1280x1024 unless the game can not run that high resolution in the first place. Such as Unreal Tournament, Diablo 2, Diablo, Dungeon Keeper, Simcity 2000, etc.


Claiming the PS2 wasn't technically better than a dreamcast is just stupid.


OMG. Who said that! Exceptions were Rayman 2 The Great Escape looked better then Rayman 2 Revolution and Grandia 2 on DC had better colors and had fps then Grandia 2 for PS2. I own these four games so i know what i am talking about.


et, PCs will jump even more than that before the end of the year!


Fine. PS3 has to come out sometime. Sony can't just delay with a G80, 512 MB GDDR3/512 MB XDR and a Cell at 4 GHz. It is in production so it doesn't get destroyed by Wii. It is good that all the consoles come out within a year of each other because none want their last generation system as their flagship system anymore. They don't want to loose ground in sales than they already have with obsolete platforms. It's funny really?

Who wants to buy PS2 or Gamecube anymore? Anyone. Heck, who wants to invest in SNES, NES, Genesis, Neo Geo anymore? Point taken. 16-bit consoles can not sell. 128-bit consoles can not sell for much longer.


There's only one more significant advantage for the PS3 over PCs


Okay so any PC with a Geforce 7950 GX2 is going to to look like PS3 on a CRT monitor. The problem with your explaniation is PS3 is having good exclusives from the same developers that made PS2 the best selling console of all time. You have your Madden NFL 200x, your Winning Eleven, your Devil May Cry, your Gran Turismo 4 HD, your Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Need for Speed Carbon, and the ability to play important 16-bit consoles....SNES, Genesis via Pgen and SNESstation, PS2PCE (Tgfx-16), It Might Be NES.


how is MS going to stay in the race for another 3-5 years?


I should really say i do not know, but i got some theories.

a.) Do low-res video and use XMA (superset of WMA9) instead of DTS, use max texture compression
b.) same as A with 1 DVD18. Technically still 1 DVD people.


Asus PhysX card.


Those things are expensive and doubling the RAM of your GPU will do the same thing. This is for if you just spent $450 on a GPU and want 20 fps better anyways. So I'd just buy a card with a gig of RAM (GDDR3) on it.


Simple, why would any one pay 500 to 600 dollars for a G80 when the PS3 can get a same performance and Play Blue ray Movies ect, for the same amount?


um...yeah. The PS3 has a G70 and blu-ray drive. And we know it won't have both a G80 and DVD-ROM. It's improblable because the Geforce 8800 alone is $500 at launch or worse offline where Best Buy charges $70 more. (price of the G7950 GX2 now)